A plan has been lodged for the development of the former driving test centre on Forest Hills Drive, which closed in April 2022.
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The application, from tenants JSY Travel, is to turn the site into a taxi HQ.
Planning documents say JSY has “expanded over the last few years, and now require offices for a control room to support taxi operations. In addition, the business provides minibus/minivan taxi travel for larger groups, for which overnight car parking is required.”
It’s proposed that the taxi control room will operate 24-hours a day, “with a maximum of two operatives and one manager present during the daytime and one operative during night-time hours”.
The former guise for the Forest Hills Drive premises
The applicant says they expect the use to generate fewer vehicle movements than when the site was a driving test centre, with “limited day-to-day activity associated mainly with staff arrivals, departures and occasional operational requirements”.
The DVSA closed the driving test centre in April 2022, during the Conservative government, following a campaign and petition to keep it open.
It left the city with a single test centre in Maybush.
As previously reported, the then Southampton Itchen Conservative MP Royston Smith was among those who supported the campaign, encouraging residents to sign the petition.
Residents have until September 17 to file comments on the planning application.